On Getting Better

Wishing to change, to become the person we would rather be, is really a way of chasing the life we hope for. But the picture we form of a good life is built from what we have already lived through and from the words we have absorbed, so any sentence we use to describe our wishes carries the traces of earlier sentences. Every change also moves us toward a future we cannot fully predict.

This book asks how we might talk about the desire to change without losing sight of that uncertainty. It is a companion to On Wanting to Change and turns the same attention onto the language itself, asking how we might become more skilful at discussing what it means to improve.

The author, Adam Phillips, is a British psychoanalyst and essayist known for writing about psychoanalysis, literature and everyday life.